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HISTORY

The Women’s Working Group on Financing for Development (WWG on FfD) was formed in October 2007 as an alliance of women’s organizations and networks to advocate for the advancement of gender equality, women’s empowerment and human rights in the Financing for Development (FfD) related UN processes including:

• High-Level Dialogue on FfD (Oct 2007);
• Commission on the Status of Women (Mar 2008);
• Hearings of Civil Society on FfD (Jun 2008);
• ECOSOC Development Cooperation Forum (Jun 2008);
• Doha Review Conference on Financing for Development (Nov 2008);
• Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System (Mar 2009);
• Commission on the Status of Women (Mar 2009);
• ECOSOC-BWIs-WTO-UNCTAD Spring Meeting (Apr 2009);
• The Conference on the World Financial and Economic Crisis and its Impact on Development (June 09).

In the context of the financial and economic crises, those UN processes presented opportunities to make significant structural changes in the global development architecture. The WWG on FfD seized this political moment to move towards advocating for a rights-based global development architecture that recognizes the central role of the care economy, social reproduction and sexuality.

On the road to the Doha Review Conference (2008), the WWG on FfD was coordinated by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN) and included the following organizations: the African Women’s Development and Communication Network (FEMNET), Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID), the Feminist Task Force (FTF), the Global Policy Forum (GPF), the International Gender and Trade Network (IGTN), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), the Network for Women’s Rights in Ghana (NETRIGHT), the Women’s Environment and Development Organization (WEDO) and Women in Development-Europe (WIDE).

The III UN Financing for Development Conference will take place in July 2015 in Addis Ababa, contributing to the need to revitalize the WWG on FfD. In this context, the WWG on FfD is intended to be an extensive arena for networking, strategizing and alliance building on FfD related issues, bringing a feminist and women’s rights perspective to the discussions and deliberations ahead of the III International Conference on FfD.